Blowfish Racing Shifter Fix

[TMSBOSS]

I think the problem may actually be where the bracket makes contact with the bottom of the shifter assembly.
either take the bracket off and cut out a piece of gasket and put it in between, or put some RTV, if you want to go the messy way.

The circled area, does the shifter assembly make contact with the shifter?

Agree. Vibration is being transferred through the mount and padding of some sort may reduce the transfer.

My point was that I have experienced vibration being transferred from the cross member to a drive shaft loop which mounts exactly as the BF bracket does. It was hard to diagnose sine the vibration was not constant. Load on the mount caused deflection which brought the bracket from the loop into contact with the cross member. If this is the case, relieving the bracket, cross member or shimming out the bracket may eliminate the problem.

I believe we are attacking the same problem from different directions, literally. Stop the vibration at the point of transfer either at the trans mount and or cross member area or where the adapter attaches to the bracket.

Thoughts???

 

[Highpower11]

Thanks for the advice! I hope to be under the car again late today and will look at these areas. BTW my vibration is FAR worse than as described in Evo's video so I will be looking for unwanted contact along the areas described above.

 

[skwerl]

I have the MGW shifter and I sometimes get a loud, heavy vibration on hard left turns under power. Reading these comments makes me believe the issue may be contact between the BF bracket and the shifter body. I'm going to look at this today and if this is the case then I will try adding a layer of Dynamat sandwiched in between the BF bracket and the MGW rear mount adapter piece. Not only will this add a little insulation between the pieces but it will increase the gap between the bracket body and the shifter body.

 

[skwerl]

Update! I got the car up on stands and a quick look reveals that the rear mount on the MGW has been contacting the old factory mounting stud, and actually bent the stud to the side. This is why I don't hear the noise as often as the contact has bent the offending piece out of the way.

I know Steve said there wouldn't be any contact here but obviously there is. I'm afraid the only permanent solution is to remove the stud but that will create a problem if you ever wish to return the car to stock. I think I'm going to try simply bending the stud a little bit further and just hope I can straighten it out without breaking it off if I ever return to stock.

Edited to add- I couldn't bend the stud but I loosened the 8 bolts connecting the upper and lower brackets and cocked the upper bracket backward slightly. This moved the MGW rear mount further out to the ends of the two posts and away from the studs sticking down from the body.

 

[TMSBOSS]

Update! I got the car up on stands and a quick look reveals that the rear mount on the MGW has been contacting the old factory mounting stud, and actually bent the stud to the side. This is why I don't hear the noise as often as the contact has bent the offending piece out of the way.

I know Steve said there wouldn't be any contact here but obviously there is. I'm afraid the only permanent solution is to remove the stud but that will create a problem if you ever wish to return the car to stock. I think I'm going to try simply bending the stud a little bit further and just hope I can straighten it out without breaking it off if I ever return to stock.

Edited to add- I couldn't bend the stud but I loosened the 8 bolts connecting the upper and lower brackets and cocked the upper bracket backward slightly. This moved the MGW rear mount further out to the ends of the two posts and away from the studs sticking down from the body.

Curious if we could run a nut on the stud and then shorten the stud and retain the ability to return to stock. If I remember correctly, the stud is much longer than needed.

 

[WinterSucks]

Is the old factory stud a PEM stud? (pressed into tunnel metal vs just a bolt one can remove).

 

[VoodooBoss]

Curious if we could run a nut on the stud and then shorten the stud and retain the ability to return to stock. If I remember correctly, the stud is much longer than needed.

Yes those studs are very long and I like your idea. You probably wouldn't need to cut much off of the stock stud.

 

[skwerl]

I've driven the car a bit since posting that and it's definitely much better. I'd also like to shout out to Steve at Blowfish and say that you're welcome to use any of my pictures if you like.

 

[jlwdvm]

I received my shifter bracket along with my front and rear toe hooks on Wednesday. A drunk monkey could install the bracket in less than the stated 1.5 hours! I have a Barton shifter and was using their original bracket as well. I might have been cheating a little bit since I was working under a lift. I was able to take the car for a drive this morning and am getting a lot more NVH than I was with the Barton bracket. With the Barton bracket I would get a short duration of noise between 3000-3500 RPM. The duration of noise is much longer now with the BFR bracket. I have the car on the lift again to adjust the bracket down to see if the NVH decreases. If I press down on the shifter ball when it is making noise, the noise goes away....just like it did with the Barton bracket. I track my car several times a year and would rather have precise shifting (which did improve with the BFR Bracket) than a quiet cock pit. Who can hear anything at 7500rpm with the windows down anyway! Thanks BFR!

 

[Calif boss302]

I may delay my install today to see what other fixes come up. I think cutting the stock mounting braket bolts would be a challenge under the car

 

[jlwdvm]

I think the problem may actually be where the bracket makes contact with the bottom of the shifter assembly.
either take the bracket off and cut out a piece of gasket and put it in between, or put some RTV, if you want to go the messy way.

The circled area, does the shifter assembly make contact with the shifter?

I checked and I have zero clearance in this area. I am going to make a 1/16" shim to place between the shifter bracket and the mount to see if this gets clearance between the bottom of the shifter and the top of the blue bracket. I may also place a small amount of Dyna Mat in this area as well.

 

[skwerl]

I received my shifter bracket along with my front and rear toe hooks on Wednesday. A drunk monkey could install the bracket in less than the stated 1.5 hours! I have a Barton shifter and was using their original bracket as well. I might have been cheating a little bit since I was working under a lift. I was able to take the car for a drive this morning and am getting a lot more NVH than I was with the Barton bracket. With the Barton bracket I would get a short duration of noise between 3000-3500 RPM. The duration of noise is much longer now with the BFR bracket. I have the car on the lift again to adjust the bracket down to see if the NVH decreases. If I press down on the shifter ball when it is making noise, the noise goes away....just like it did with the Barton bracket. I track my car several times a year and would rather have precise shifting (which did improve with the BFR Bracket) than a quiet cock pit. Who can hear anything at 7500rpm with the windows down anyway! Thanks BFR!

I bet you a dollar you're having the same issue I did. Check the clearance on the factory rear bracket studs sticking down from the sheet metal.

 

[Pitt302]

I have the MGW shifter as well,have not installed my bracket yet.Is there any way to remove studs rather than cutting them? Also has anyone used this Bracket with a 4'' one piece Driveshaft?

 

[skwerl]

The studs are welded into the body. Also, I think you may have contact between your 4" driveshaft and the nuts/bolts connecting the upper and lower parts of the Blowfish bracket. Here you can see how much clearance I have with a 3.5" driveshaft.

 

[VoodooBoss]

The studs are welded into the body. Also, I think you may have contact between your 4" driveshaft and the nuts/bolts connecting the upper and lower parts of the Blowfish bracket. Here you can see how much clearance I have with a 3.5" driveshaft.

Can you turn the bolts around?

 

[steveespo]

I turned them around and you gain the length of the protruding threads on each side. Not hard to do. Button head bolts would gain even more clearance.

As for the vibrations I have them too, no noise though which is good. Maybe this is why Ford did not make a mount like this in the first place. Racecar=I don't care about NVH (unless it slows me down).
Steve

 

[drano38]

Yes, its easy to put the 8 bolts in from inside out. See my photos from my install. As Steve said, the clearance gain is not having the bolt sticking thru the nuts, which isn't much but it might be enough to help certain installations.

Update on my vibration -- Last nite I lowered the bracket all the way (which puts the shifter about stock height, or maybe a little lower). The factory hanger bracket mounting studs do not appear to be getting hit by the shifter or bracket.

Test drove again today. Still moderate rattle under hard acceleration and the shifter is moving a fair amount. I'm thinking its a result of the shift lever vibrating in the shifter box (it seems there's shift lever movement from slack while in gear).
Not sure if a shim will help, but it would be fairly easy to try. Maybe I'll grab a few steel washers from work, and find a neoprene washer to stack in, and see what happens.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[boss man]

[quote author=steveespo
Maybe this is why Ford did not make a mount like this in the first place. Racecar=I don't care about NVH (unless it slows me down).
Steve
[/quote]
I cant see that... I highly dought that Ford would think that.
First off it's a mustang. One of the most highly modified cars out there. I'm sure that if you were to poll the public and ask the question:
Would you rather have a mustang that has little to some NVH and shifts when you want it to.
Or NO NVH and shifts like crap. Resulting in many destroyed transmissions and frustrated coustermers.
I truley believe that Steve at BF beat the Ford enginners at there own game.
Till this day I still cant understand why Ford would rather repair countless transmissions instead of correcting the cause. Lets face it, the enginners can take things even futher than steve was able to. Steve had to work with what was being produced. Ford could give more clearance down there so maybe some type of buffering could be installed to keep some NVH down. Hell, whats the first thing most Mustang owners do....add axel back or like the Boss, remove the disks to add more noise...
To me: If you dont have some type of NVH your not connected with the car. Its like the car talking to the driver in some ways. Driving a car thats has no NVH and smooth as could be would be borning.

As for the bracket hitting the stud for the shifter snout. Maybe try sliding a peice of vaccumm rubber hose over the stud to stop the metal to metal contact. Just a thought.

 

[PeteInCT]

[quote author=steveespo
Maybe this is why Ford did not make a mount like this in the first place. Racecar=I don't care about NVH (unless it slows me down).
Steve

I cant see that... I highly dought that Ford would think that.
First off it's a mustang. One of the most highly modified cars out there. I'm sure that if you were to poll the public and ask the question:
Would you rather have a mustang that has little to some NVH and shifts when you want it to.
Or NO NVH and shifts like crap. Resulting in many destroyed transmissions and frustrated coustermers.
I truley believe that Steve at BF beat the Ford enginners at there own game.
Till this day I still cant understand why Ford would rather repair countless transmissions instead of correcting the cause. Lets face it, the enginners can take things even futher than steve was able to. Steve had to work with what was being produced. Ford could give more clearance down there so maybe some type of buffering could be installed to keep some NVH down. Hell, whats the first thing most Mustang owners do....add axel back or like the Boss, remove the disks to add more noise...
To me: If you dont have some type of NVH your not connected with the car. Its like the car talking to the driver in some ways. Driving a car thats has no NVH and smooth as could be would be borning.

As for the bracket hitting the stud for the shifter snout. Maybe try sliding a peice of vaccumm rubber hose over the stud to stop the metal to metal contact. Just a thought.

Steve at BF is very bright. So are Ford Engineers. Ford didn't do this because of NVH and cost. The Boss LS was initially tested with the 6060 tranny, then they went to the MT-82. WHY ???? Same reasons. I'm just glad Steve made these. About 6 months ago I came close to having someone design and fab the same idea, but I had no clue exactly how to do it and it was going to cost too much to find out. Steve to the rescue ;D

-Pete

 

[Calif boss302]

As for the bracket hitting the stud for the shifter snout. Maybe try sliding a peice of vaccumm rubber hose over the stud to stop the metal to metal contact. Just a thought.

That's a great idea